Lotus Guns for The Podium - And Beyond

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Lotus Guns for The Podium - And Beyond

Back in the early 1960s, Lotus turned up at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to challenge race cars that Lotus founder Colin Chapman considered dinosaurs. The men who built and drove those dinosaurs derided Team Lotus and its new-fangled mid-engined car until the great Jimmy Clark ended up beating A.J. Foyt, Parnelli Jones and the rest of the field like a bunch of rented mules in 1965. Then they all started lining up for mid-engined cars.

Lotus isn't predicting the same kind of success at the Indy Grand Prix of Alabama this weekend, but it is hoping for a better finish than it has had at the first two races of the season.

But Lotus may have bigger plans for IndyCar. Like, say, providing the chassis or engines the rest of the field will use beginning in 2012.

The venerable British automaker, which was a venerable British racing team long before it started making road cars, competed at the Indianapolis 500 from 1963 through 1969, winning it in 1965 with the gorgeous Type 38 driven by Clark.

Lotus returned to IndyCar racing this season but it has gotten off to a rough start. Takuma Sato has been driving the Lotus entry, decked out in the traditional green with a yellow racing stripe, in the 2010 IZOD Indy Racing Series, but so far has failed to finish a race because of accidents. Still, the team is hopeful of its chances in Alabama.

"The track at Barber is a lot more like an F1 circuit, which is what I am used to," Sato, a former Formula 1 driver, said. "I do enjoy the street races, but they can be harder to get into a rhythm, so I am really looking forward to pushing myself and the car hard, making up for the issues we had at the last race at St. Petersburg and making Lotus proud."

Never let it be said Sato doesn't know how to drive. He drove for F1 teams Jordan, BAR and Super Aguri and has a reputation for being a bit, well, banzai on the track. He's never been one to be easily threatened or intimidated – one need only recall that amazing pass he put on double world champion Fernando Alonso at the Canada Grand Prix in 2007 to know he won't back down from a fight. And the reconstituted Lotus Indycar team is backing him up, 110 percent.

"I am really looking forward to this weekend. The Lotus mechanics together with the KV Racing team have been working hard on getting the perfect set-up for Taku to suit his driving style. Barber Motorsports Park feels like a home from home as the resort houses the largest collection of classic Lotus cars anywhere in the world, so I would like to think that we have a small psychological advantage over our competitors," Claudio Berro, Director of Motorsport for Lotus said.

But Lotus may have more than the top step of the podium in mind. IndyCar is essentially a spec series where all the teams run Dallara chassis and Honda engines. There is widespread speculation that Lotus may make a bid to provide the engines, developed with Cosworth, or the chassis when the engine specs take effect in 2012. Racking up some wins would go a long way toward giving Lotus some credibility.

Main photo: Lotus. And because we've got 'em, here are some historical photos of Jimmy Clark and the Lotus crew at Indy in 1965 courtesy of IMS Photo.